Too localized to the not yet here and guessing about what a company or tech will come to do or might be sounds like not a real question. Possibly no longer relevant in a future tense.

It's kind of blatantly offensive for those without a bottle of cristal and partially not programming related. More business really. It's a bit subjective and argumentative as well don't you think? Long is the LOST series over Fate versus Destiny.

I disagree that this is "not a real question". Programmers have a responsibility to contribute to technology choice and issues like this matter.

Companies make statements on these issues, sometimes they even make legal commitments, for instance guaranteeing to support a technology until a certain date, or making an escrow agreement so that the code would become available to customers if the company became bankrupt.

So it is possible to provide informed, useful, and objective answers to these questions (although it is unlikely to be a straight "yes" or "no"). Don't close the questions. "Subjective", ill-informed, ranting answers should be closed, same as any other question.

Those downvotes came fast. Anyone care to leave a comment?
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MarkJJul 16 '10 at 13:29

You disagree with something people agree with. Their downvotes indicate this. Usually, the only way to garner an upvote would be to change your opinion.
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devinbJul 16 '10 at 13:49

Though it wasn't my downvote, you may be missing the context. Questions of this type are overwhelmingly asking for wild speculation and those should definitely be closed. If you have found a question that you feel has been unfairly closed, please post a link.
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GnomeJul 16 '10 at 13:50

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I can't see the question "do oracle intend to continue work on Java" because it's been closed, but I think it's a good example. It's an important question if you're a Java programmer or if you own code written in Java. As it happens, I'm not very well informed, but I think the answer is "yes it appears they will", because Oracle have made some public commitments, they own a lot of code written in Java, and they've kept on some senior staff from Sun to maintain Java. Those are all objective facts and it's the most informed objective issue.
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MarkJJul 16 '10 at 13:52

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@MarkJ: but the "past Java 7" part is unanswerable until Oracle either produces a "Java 8" or, well, fails to do so.
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SamBFeb 18 '11 at 0:31

@SamB True, you can't make a 100% yes or no answer until after the event. But that's true of any statement about the future. Here's another example. Suppose your customer wants to get a new server. Do you say (A) "we won't know whether our code works until after you've bought it, I can't predict the future, that's logically impossible". Or do you say (B) "Well, we'll have to do some testing, but I've read the technical documentation carefully and I don't foresee any problems at this stage". Because, let me tell you, if you say B, your customer is going to look for another developer.
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MarkJFeb 18 '11 at 9:16

@MarkJ: yeah, well, I'm kinda hoping Oracle is left with little more than the trade dress of Java before Java 8 comes around... I really don't like how they run things! (Also, they messed up the color scheme of the logo!)
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SamBFeb 19 '11 at 20:44

@SamB I have wondered whether some folks are angry at this "do Oracle intend to continue work on Java" question because they're angry with Oracle.
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MarkJFeb 21 '11 at 9:54